The holidays are upon us again, and it’s amazing how busy this time of year can be for marketers and small businesses. It’s important to keep up with social media marketing during this time, as the months of November and December are prime consumer times. And, the holidays are wonderful opportunities for emotional touchpoints with your social audience. This is not new information, of course, but I want to talk to you today about using a content calendar to manage your holiday marketing. It will come in handy in the crazy holiday months to come, but it can make you a more effective social media marketer all year long.

A Social Media Marketer’s Day Without a Content Calendar

Whether you’re a freelancer, in-house social media guru, small business owner, or agency, if you’re in charge of social media posting for any business, you’re a social media marketer. No two SMM’s day is exactly the same, but a lot of us have similar ways of working. We asked several of the members of ourContent Hacker’s Facebook group what their normal day was like before they started using PromoRepublic’s holiday content calendar, and the results were surprising.

Most started with idea brainstorming first thing in the morning. Over coffee or tea, they’d listen to podcasts, read news alerts, research the significance of the day at hand and try to come up with ideas for social media posts for the day or week they were scheduling. Since they felt most creative first thing in the morning, that’s often when they’d write their blog posts, write emails and start thinking of the wording for the social posts they needed to schedule.

Before lunch, they’d generally do something administrative, like competitor research or keyword research. Then, over lunch, they’d browse all the social media channels to get even more ideas of what to post. They’d share posts from pages they followed, respond to comments and tweets, and generally manage the engagement on their accounts.

After lunch, they’d read thought leadership posts about social media. Sort of like this one you’re reading now. They’d also read Neil Patel, Neal Schafer, and some of the other gurus. They may even email a few of the big bloggers to see if they could get a guest posting opportunity. Then, they’d go back into the social accounts and interact with fans and followers.

They said they spent a total of 8 hours per day doing their jobs, with more than half of that time devoted to coming up with ideas for social posts. They didn’t use an editorial calendar at all. They’d just post things as they created them, or they’d schedule them in HootSuite or Buffer for later.

Since PromoRepublic has a packed holiday content calendar with layers of ideas, our SMMs all of the sudden spent much less time finding ideas for posts. PromoRepublic’s calendar has trends, holidays, celebrity news, sports and other layers that result in anywhere between 10 and 20 ideas for posts per day. And, because PromoRepublic pre-designs several templates per week, our SMMs were spending less time creating the posts as well. By finding ideas, editing templates and scheduling posts all in PromoRepublic’s content calendar, our SMMs ended up saving 4-5 hours per day.

Of course it is important to do keyword research, interact with fans and followers and all the other tasks we mentioned in the first section. However, when you find yourself saving half to more than half of your time by having ready access to tons of ideas, you have more time to focus on engagement, get more creative with your marketing in general, and do other things that can boost brand awareness.

And freelancers found they could take on more clients.

Time Is Money – Looking at This Information By The Numbers

Say you’re a freelancer, and you get paid $60 per hour. Most of your clients aren’t willing to pay you 8 hours per day to do their social media marketing. That’s why they hired a freelancer, after all. Depending on what other responsibilities you have for your clients, you may find you have oodles of extra time every day, letting you bring on more clients, and make more money.

Now let’s look at the in-house social media marketer. With half your day freed up, you can create more social accounts for the business you work for, spend more time making important connections to help boost your posts, and generally impress the dickens out of your marketing department. You still have a full time job, and the time suck of coming up with post ideas can be filled with value-added activities that can elevate your efforts to the next level. You’ll be making more money for your company and they’ll be spending the same amount.

Small business owners barely have time for meals, much less social media that they know they have to do, but don’t have a handle on the activity’s potential ROI. By putting PromoRepublic in their hands, they can manage their social accounts in just a few minutes per day, with ease. This gives them more time to focus on customer service and other lead-generating activities.

Agencies also benefit monetarily, for largely the same reasons freelancers do. PromoRepublic gives them the ability to create powerful social posts for their clients in a fraction of the time. That means they have more time to bring on more and more clients.

The Bottom Line

PromoRepublic’s powerful social media tool is great for anyone who is responsible for social media marketing, and wants to do it the smart way. Sign up for a free trial today.